Definition
BASIC (Beginners’ All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code) is a family of general-purpose, high-level programming languages designed for ease of use. Created in 1964 by John G. Kemeny and Thomas E. Kurtz at Dartmouth College, BASIC was specifically designed to make computer programming accessible to students and non-scientists. Before BASIC, programming required knowledge of assembly language or complex scientific languages like Fortran. BASIC changed everything by using simple English-like commands: PRINT, INPUT, GOTO, IF...THEN. It was the language that launched the personal computer revolution. When the Apple II, Commodore 64, and TRS-80 hit the market in the late 1970s and early 1980s, they all came with BASIC built into their ROM chips. An entire generation of programmers — including Bill Gates, who wrote a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800 — learned to code by typing 10 PRINT "HELLO WORLD" into a blinking cursor.
Why It Matters
BASIC matters because it democratized computing. Before BASIC, computers were mainframes locked in university basements, operated by men in white lab coats. After BASIC, computers were in living rooms, and anyone could write a program. The language was intentionally simple, sometimes to the point of being crude — its heavy reliance on GOTO statements produced “spaghetti code” that was hard to debug. But that simplicity was its genius. A child could learn BASIC in an afternoon and have a working game by evening. The language spawned countless variants: Microsoft BASIC, Applesoft BASIC, Commodore BASIC, Turbo BASIC, QBasic, Visual Basic. Each iteration added more power and structure, eventually evolving into modern development environments. But the core idea remained: computers should be programmable by everyone, not just specialists. BASIC was the gateway drug that hooked millions on coding.
Example
A twelve-year-old in 1983 turns on their Commodore 64. The screen blinks blue. They type: 10 PRINT "HELLO". Then 20 GOTO 10. Then RUN. The screen fills with the word HELLO, scrolling endlessly. The child has written their first infinite loop. They are delighted. They are terrified. They are a programmer. Thirty years later, that child is a software engineer at Google. They still remember the blue screen, the blinking cursor, and the moment they realized that a machine could do exactly what they told it to do. BASIC was not elegant. It was not sophisticated. But it was there when they needed it.
The Internet Angle
The internet has preserved BASIC as a nostalgic artifact and a living language. Websites like BASIC-256 and QB64 offer modern interpreters that run BASIC on contemporary systems. Retro computing communities on Reddit (r/retrobattlestations, r/c64) share screenshots of vintage BASIC programs and compete in “10-line BASIC” coding challenges, where programmers create surprisingly complex games in just ten lines of code. YouTube channels dedicated to vintage computing produce tutorials on how to write BASIC for the Commodore 64, Apple II, and Sinclair ZX Spectrum. The internet has also documented BASIC’s role in the Microsoft origin story: Bill Gates and Paul Allen’s first product was a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800, and Microsoft’s dominance in PC software began with MS-BASIC. The language that taught a generation to code is now a historical monument, visited by tourists from the future.
Related Terms
Programming, Commodore 64, Apple II, Microsoft, Bill Gates, Retro Computing, Coding, GOTO, QBasic, Visual Basic, 1980s, Nostalgia, Computer History, Internet Culture